Ida Clare, I Can't Stop Complaining

Hello Friends,

I would like to thank all of you who listened to me while I whined relentlessly about the unbelievable amount of canning that Ida Mama made me help her with last week.  Now that a few days have passed since I have had something organic to pick and shell, wash and peel, chop and slop into a hot water bath over a hot stove, I am starting to feel better. 

I finally understand that the reason a person desires to fill the freezer to capacity is that it prevents you from climbing inside to cool off which might seem like a good idea at the time, but would eventually lead to a whole new set of problems, not the least of which would be starving to death surrounded by all that frozen food and you unable to get to the microwave and the defrost button.

Instead of turning into a human Popsicle, I made the decision to get cool by drinking pink lemonade from the one Mason Jar I had left that wasn’t full of jalapeño peppers or plum jelly.  I guess since nobody has made moonshine around here since prohibition, we won’t be cranking up the still, especially since we’ve about run out of jars.

Ida Mama doesn’t believe in going to the store and buying more jars when you’re running low.  Much like looking for change in the couch cushions, we look in the storage room, the garage, under the bed, under the sink, in the pantry and all parts in between for empty jars that we can scald with hot boiling water to make them canning ready again.  Since it has always been the philosophy of anyone in our family to never throw anything away, this seems to work itself out. 

Well, you’ve done it again: Listened to me complain.  I’m sorry, I just can’t seem to stop myself.

I promise the next post will be about something else.
Hugs,

Ida Clare, It's Adventures in Canning

On my last post, I mentioned my mother, Ida Mama, but did I mention that we live really close to each other?   Close proximity is a nice way of saying that I recklessly gave my mother a key to the back door of my house when I moved here and she never fails to use it when it suits her and it suits her when the produce wagon comes to town.

I realized the error of my ways when she showed up with the following:

2 cases of Roma tomatoes

1 case of bananas

2 cases of peaches

about 10 whole cabbages

12 gigantic cucumbers

a bucket of string beans

and a partridge in a pear tree (Not really, I made that part up.)

Kill.  Me.  Now.

What I am wondering is why not bring in a case of beer that's already been canned?  That would have made the work week more palatable, if you ask me.

I’m not the only one singing the canning blues.

My birthday was a while back and due to our busy canning schedules, the wild celebrations with my Ida Mama and my Ida Aunts had to be postponed.  I am being taken to the "Tea Room" in Big Thicket. 
I wonder if they have Long Island Iced Tea? And if I could manage to drink several of them while we discuss our respective ailments and canning adventures:

"What's good here?"

"I've heard the basil soup is good, but I hate to order it when I have 26 pints at home."

"What about the spaghetti?  No.  Nobody makes it like the sauce you just put up from that 2 cases of tomatoes.  I'll never eat Ragu again."

"That's why my hands hurt, from peeling all those tomatoes.  I probably won't be able to hold the fork anyway."

"My neighbor says the banana bread here is the best she ever ate, so I might have it instead of the peach pie.  Anybody need a case of peaches?"  Everybody shakes their head no in unison.

"I'd rather eat dirt than eat another banana.  By the time we ate banana pudding, banana smoothies, sliced bananas on our cereal, made and froze 6 double batches of banana bread before all those free bananas turned brown, I am starting to feel like a monkey.  I would have been better off smoking the peel."

"I wondered why you were looking at my scalp for head lice."

Sigh.

"Uh waitress, I'll have The Long Island Iced Tea.  I'm going to drink my lunch."

Have a good week, 
Hugs,

Ida Clare I'm Feeling Snarky!

It has been brought to my attention that I am not being as honest as I could be in this space and that my tone has changed somewhat since I started this blog

“You mean you’ve changed from sarcastic to really sarcastic?”

No, it’s the other way around.

“Really?  You mean you aren’t sarcastic as you used to be?  I find that hard to believe.”

Oh, I hate to admit this, but when I first started this blog, I had planned to hide out here and keep a low profile.  It was easy to make snarky remarks about people I didn’t know.  But the longer I’m here, the more hesitant (read: afraid) I am to make snarky remarks about people who drive around with guns-racks in their pickups and are so religious that they have the ear of God on speed dial.

The real reason I seem to have curbed my enthusiasm for snarky-ism is my mother.  I haven’t talked about Ida Mama because I wanted to respect her privacy and I was afraid that people here might blame her for my audacity to mention that I am not a fan of Duck Dynasty or that the emperor doesn’t have on any clothes. (Here the emperor would be a naked redneck and really, who would want to call attention to that?)

So in deference to Ida Mama, I have toned things down so much that I just don’t write anything snarky and that has got to stop.  I haven’t written much about politics or religion because my mother told me that you don’t talk about them in mixed company.  I guess she meant a mix of Democrats and Republicans or Heathens or Christians.  Here, it can get you thrown out of Golden Corral before you have a chance to swing by the chocolate fountain three or four times. 

However, it is difficult not to speak up with Texas politics being what it is and a prize-winning buffoon of a U.S. Congressman with a last name straight out of Mayberry named: (wait for it) Gohmert. Here is his picture below.   Shazam!

My mother is well-known and well-loved in her community and surely she will be forgiven for her wayward daughter making a few wisecracks about butt-cracks in Wal-mart.  The truth is nobody reads this blog anyway except a few Big Thicket Outcasts who keep their opinions and their butt-cracks to themselves.

Hugs,